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• The Writing Center is part of WMU's Center for Academic Support Programs

What to Expect at the Writing Center

Writing Center Teaching Goal

The Writing Center represents one of Western Michigan University’s commitments to helping students learn how to learn.

Our goal is to help writers improve their overall writing skills.

What We Do, Given Our Goal

During a 50-minute appointment or 30-minute drop-in consultation, we will do the following:

• Assess the needs of the writer by discussing or exploring an assignment or reviewing a written response
• Determine on a top-down basis the most important meaning-making need/s the writer requires to be able to improve his/her written text and facility with rhetorical strategies. We often do so by following a mental checklist of questions:
  • Did the writer meet the needs of the assignment?
  • Did the writer meet the needs of the readers?
  • Did the writer deliver information in an appropriate way (organized, developed, cohesive, etc.)?
• Devise, by asking the writer questions, a plan for helping him/her understand meaning-making improvement options such as
  • rhetorical strategies—idea getting methods, organizational approaches, audience analyses and expectations, paragraph development, textual cohesion, etc.
  • document clarity methods—targeted proofreading strategies, personal error pattern analyses, focused mechanics lessons (based on writer’s text or questions)
  • documentation systems—use of Chicago Manual, MLA, and APA reference styles

What We Don’t Do, Given Our Goal

We will not:

• write papers or parts of papers for writers
• correct papers while the writers sit passively waiting for their texts to be improved
• offer a potential grade on an assignment
• send a note to a professor on behalf of a student unless the student engages in a consultation
• share information about the work students and consultants have done in the Writing Center unless the student gives us permission to do so